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BEA has agreed to acquisition by Oracle Corp, for $8.5 billion dollars, as mentioned as a possibility by TSS back in October 2007. This strengthens Oracle's SOA market share, giving it access to BEA's AquaLogic, Tuxedo, JRockit, Kodo, and BEA Workshop.
It's a logical move, but one that gives Oracle a lot of redundancy: Oracle already has an application server, already has a SOA stack, already has a transaction management through BPM and its flagship database, already has social computing initiatives, and already offers a development environment via JDeveloper. BEA, of course, gains Oracle's marketing strength and more integration with products like Tangosol Coherence, acquired by Oracle in March 2007.
What do TSS readers see as happening? BEA clearly has some strong products, so that's an obvious "win" for Oracle: JRockit, Kodo, and WebLogic Workshop are excellent offerings.
That said, does Oracle really need another JPA implementation? It now has TopLink and Kodo, so it has JPA support through both products; it also gets JDO courtesy of Kodo.
What about application servers? Oracle licensed the OrionServer source years ago, and has since created a completely separate product in OC4J; is Oracle going to relegate OC4J to the back burner, or BEA WebLogic? Or will both application servers remain as "flagship offerings," competing with each other much as WebSphere Community Edition does with WebSphere? (One obvious difference is that WebSphere CE is based on the open source application server from Apache, Geronimo.)
WebLogic Workshop is a suite of extensions to Eclipse; Oracle already has JDeveloper, a standalone Java IDE. Does this mean Oracle is planning on using Eclipse as a base platform, or is it planning on reducing the emphasis on Workshop? (Of course, this is somewhat dependent on what happens to BEA WebLogic Server, as Workshop has a lot of useful integration tools with WLS.)
In any case, congratulations go out to both companies. We look forward to seeing what happens in the future.

BEA has some really solid products and solid earnings / cash in the bank. So why would BEA's board of directors agree to sell to Oracle?
Must be a money thing....allowing BEA's individual investors to cash in.
My crystal ball sees this move as a loss of IT jobs as well as customer confusion. If I were IBM or another company with a strong Java Application Server offering, I would do a marketing blitz, take advantage of the merger roadbumps and gain market share.
If I was a BEA employee, I don't think I would be too happy about the merger (unless I was sitting on top of a huge stack of stock options).
Regards,
Tom Pridham

The "Why" is simple:
1) The era of the successful mid-size business software systems company is over. The era of consolidation in that sector is here. Oracle is leading that consolidation movement currently - clearly they want to maintain their lead.
2) Customers are unlikely to switch away in large numbers from a specific middleware platform. They have millions invested in these products and most of them will have to go through large writeoffs if they were to shift platforms. So, Oracle will continue to maintain both its own and BEA product lines for quite some time. They've generally been good about providing customer support for product lines that they acquire.
3) BEA is a profitable company and Oracle expects to incorporate that into their current profit stream. Oracle gets to re-inforce its customer base while adding to its earnings numbers and beating SAP and IBM to the punch.
All that said, was it worth all that much money - probably not.

1) The era of the successful mid-size business software systems company is over. The era of consolidation in that sector is here. Oracle is leading that consolidation movement currently - clearly they want to maintain their lead.

2) Customers are unlikely to switch away in large numbers from a specific middleware platform. They have millions invested in these products and most of them will have to go through large writeoffs if they were to shift platforms. So, Oracle will continue to maintain both its own and BEA product lines for quite some time. They've generally been good about providing customer support for product lines that they acquire.

3) BEA is a profitable company and Oracle expects to incorporate that into their current profit stream. Oracle gets to re-inforce its customer base while adding to its earnings numbers and beating SAP and IBM to the punch.

All that said, was it worth all that much money - probably not.

As to why it's good for BEA, their share price was $14 before the first acquisition offer was made in Nov 2007 - and that was the share's high point that year. Oracle is offering $19.375/share - that's nearly a 40% premium over that Nov 2007 price. If I was a BEA shareholder, I'd bite - considering that there's no way the stocks going to jump 40% on its own merit. I'd have to say again though - I think the first offer seemed like a much better deal for Oracle.

EA Infrastructure/development landscape is moving so close towards opensource technologies neverbefore. I am more excited about sun acquisition of MYSQL. With SUN's Flagship/Netbeans gaining major momentum and offering the whole stack of features,I do not understand why enterprise would want to pay major bucks for appservers.

EA Infrastructure/development landscape is moving so close towards opensource technologies neverbefore. I am more excited about sun acquisition of MYSQL. With SUN's Flagship/Netbeans gaining major momentum and offering the whole stack of features,I do not understand why enterprise would want to pay major bucks for appservers.

couldn't agree more. Sun Glassfish and Netbeans are rocking, it is a well thought open source product and after this no one in the right mind will pay for an appserver. BTW Oracle in not buying the technology stack from BEA (they might well all junk it) but thousands of Appserver clients BEA has for long period of time. I think if Oracle buys BEA, it is a big favor from Oracle to them, because I don't see any bright future of BEA.

I sold my BEA stock the first time Oracle tried to buy them (I waited patiently for 18 months for Larry's ego to bring that about). Didn't understand why Oracle wanted to waste their money on them then, and I still don't, there was and is no rational reason to acquire them. BEA sells commodity products that you can get for free.

I sold my BEA stock the first time Oracle tried to buy them (I waited patiently for 18 months for Larry's ego to bring that about). Didn't understand why Oracle wanted to waste their money on them then, and I still don't, there was and is no rational reason to acquire them. BEA sells commodity products that you can get for free.

Better with honour rather by force. Any way JBoss was eating their market share and for oracle it may help in regaining their foot in Middleware after a major failure of their AppServer which just does start enough from ground ..
Queit a lot challenges for competing among each other....

Congrats to all BEA guys that I know!
Now it is interesting to see what happens. IMHO, Oracle people are much more experienced in politics, so if Oracle tries to "merge" two product lines, they will eat BEA guys for breakfast. That would kill the management and engineering culture that has been delivering WebLogic, and, subsequently, the best application server on the market.
If I were Larry, I'd just re-brand BEA website and let it hum along as nothing happened.
Regards,
Slava Imeshev

Don't worry about Oracle, they know what do do for survive.
Russians are most intellegent but they are not the most developed nation in this universe.
Some time a combination of practical sense make more value than just being an idiotic intellegent.
So ORACLE know how to survive in changing world, BEA kept their arrogant, second world war looted german attitude in boulder colorado office and they failed even thought they could deliver some good products.

My name is Shaji Nair. I am an immigrant in USA an EX employee of BEA System. I am a candidate BEA used to give share in every three months. I am a candidate even in such a situation got laid off from BEA due to racials discrimination where they could not find an after colonial stroke syndrom Indians on me.
I am a person who borned in Indian upper cast where a state called kerala indruduced socialism in 50s and sudenly became poor but forced to live through a social changes with suffering
I eat a lot of imported wheat from america in indian school where all indian leaders looked into america as a colonial nation as british did to India through 18th and 19th century. However when I saw American wheat fill my starving stomatch as a student i started learning about USA
Abraham lincon's reading of book in street light, MLK fight, Rossvelt's determination, Clinton's straight approach etc always showed me that USA is a nation of opportunities.
However during my employement in America I felt how racism play a role if an indian in office do not tell a white guy "YES SIR No SIR" way
After i left BEA i used to criticise this company, it was a nightmare always to me
I worked so hard with basic confidence on my talent through out the year to achieve whatrever i want
So today is the day i know BEA failed and i was in their office 8 months ago on business their one british accent stupid manager with name something like "boy" talking about their entitilment system dependency on ORACLE ERP systems and how ager they wanna get ride of it by the help of ACCENTURE (Another stupids) in last 8 months
So today my feeling live for ever America is a surving society but there are racist mother fucking firm like BEA
Any BEA employees respond to this stupids look for all my posting in serverside. com since 98 and also look for emails own my me such AS
SHAJI.NAIR2BEA,COM
SONAIR at IBM dot COM
SHAJI dot NAIR at hp dot COM
I AM NOT YOUR "yeS SIR" INDIAN SO KEEP YOUR STUPIDITY WITH U BEFORE RESPOND, BEA IS A RACIST, FAILURE FIRM AND I HOPE ORACLE WILL CORRECT IT.
BY THE WAY, IT WAS MY PLEASURE TO KICK YOUR PS TEAM WITH ALL MY CLIENTS ALL OVER US AND EUROPE IN LAST 5 YEARS.
GROW UP !!

I'm going to take a random stab at this, but I think they laid you off because you can't write for shit. :)
Honestly, you sound like a very good candidate for something, but not as an employee. We're looking for some test monkeys here... interested?
Job requirements:
1. Your head must be big enough to fit into the helmets used for testing impact.
2. Willing to take various drugs and record side effects.
Best Regards,
Richard L. Burton III

Sounds like u are a hidden BEA idiot, waiting for your lay off day from Oracle????

you can go back and take a truck driver job where you are most suitable

Now I see why you've been laid off. You make a lot of assumptions about things you know nothing about.
Enjoy your time off. I hope you learn something from this lesson.
Best Regards,
Richard L. Burton III

My name is Shaji Nair. ..I am a person who borned in Indian upper cast ...However during my employement in America I felt how racism play a role if an indian in office do not tell a white guy "YES SIR No SIR" way...ACCENTURE (Another stupids) .. racist mother fucking firm like BEA<

I AM NOT YOUR "yeS SIR" INDIAN SO KEEP YOUR STUPIDITY WITH U BEFORE RESPOND, BEA IS A RACIST, FAILURE FIRM AND I HOPE ORACLE WILL CORRECT IT.

BY THE WAY, IT WAS MY PLEASURE TO KICK YOUR PS TEAM WITH ALL MY CLIENTS ALL OVER US AND EUROPE IN LAST 5 YEARS. GROW UP !!

LOL...Aren't you the guy who got fired from IBM too?
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=46684#238804
It's interesting how you´re whining about racism in the US, while at the same time taking pride in being an Indian "upper cast".
I´ve met plenty of Indians in US companies who were senior developers, architects, managers, and even VP. None of them was a "yes sir-no sir" type of person, and none of them were "segregated" to my knowledge .
Maybe you´re just unlucky...or maybe the problem is you, not the company.

I worked at BEA since October 1995 from the very beginning, and now work with many of the same people in Oracle. I have worked with people from just about every nationality while working worldwide for BEA and never ran into any racism until reading this post. There were many Indian employees at BEA and NONE of them had any problems with racism that I have befriended over the years. Like a typical person crying racism in today's world, you are the only one portraying racism at the moment. Very hypocritical.
I would also like to discuss your comment about BEA being another failure since it was anything but a failure. BEA was started by 3 guys who managed to get venture capital money to start the business. They took that $50 million dollars and turned it into a $1.5 billion dollar a year company. Then they sold the company for $8.6 billion dollars. Where is the failure moron? They increased by 12,000% faster than Microsoft in their first five years. You mention a few idiotic references to certain technologies to bolster your point that BEA was a failure, but fail to acknowledge the many successful points along the way. How about all of the technology innovations that BEA made that became part of the JDK or part of Java EE? BEA was a leader if not THE leader in their field, and you are blinded by your anger of being fired by them. You are the failure here.
You are clearly a disgruntled ex-employee who is probably an ex-employee for being the type of person that would write this post.
By the way, if I were you I would refrain from posting such negative and ignorant comments on the web. A hiring manager could search your name online and see just what type of person you are before even letting you in the door. I bet you would call them a stupid racist too. Then again, don't stop... maybe this will keep me from having to work with you in the future someday.
Sheesh... all I was doing was looking for deployment tips on JDev and look what I find. Go Google!

Oracle's interest behind this purchase is nothing has to do with quality of software. Oracle would like to get the install base, BEA established just after the Ecommerce era.
I have mentioned a long time ago in TSS there is not even a good product came out from BEA as a company. They could able to hold some good candidate's brain with the money they made during E-Commerce and .com time also with Bell Lab's left out waste Tuxedo SALES.
As I have explained
Weblogic Application Server is a dream of a bunch of software engineers lived in San Jose apartments in early days of J2EE world.
Portal and WLI is some where from east cost , even after BEA purchased these products they could not even re-write the UUP without a statefull and Entity EJB.
cache util jar still use a simple hash map java class.
Wow! great software firm right??
1) It took 7 years to introduce POJO to WLI
2) 4 years to bring workshop to Eclipse
3) 4 years to introduce SCA and SDO
4) 1 minute to BARK against IBM
5) 30 second to BARK against Oracle, but still use ORACLE 6)ERP products for HR and license management application
BEA is same as GM and FORDS fighting against Honda and Toyota in 2008
Another failure of the 21st century.
In other hand Oracle is company with at least a good database. Realized the future of their survival as a company in 98 and asked all their IT guys to pack the bag to Bangalore and started a new way to be best in the IT business.
I hope Oracle will fire all stupids from BEA and will start a new future for middleware computing
Thanks

Shaji,
I think forgiveness has much more meaning than carrying all that hatred in your heart. For once let go of all that ill feelings whether its towards IBM / BEA / to any country or to any individual. At the end of the day peace of mind is what you need whether you are a developer / CTO / CEO. So there is no harm in saying, I have let bygones be bygones and starting afresh and not think about all the past. Look for another company which has the same goal as yours and work towards that goal.
Anyhow, Best of luck to you Shaji.

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